


Tony Stark Doesn't Scrape Windows

by rebelmeg



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pepperony - Fandom
Genre: But he's really great at being a filthy rich person that cares, F/M, Pepperony - Freeform, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony might be rubbish at being a normal human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 08:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7794562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelmeg/pseuds/rebelmeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is good at a lot of things, and almost all of them involve lots of money and assorted mechanical and technological components.  Therefore, scraping ice off car windows isn't exactly his speed, and he is quite frankly appalled that no one has figured out a solution to this annoyance yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tony Stark Doesn't Scrape Windows

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy this little slice of Tony encountering normal human being inconvenience and reacting in the most Stark way possible.
> 
> Set close to the beginning of Iron Man 2. I don't recall at this moment if they ever actually say where the Stark Expo was held in Iron Man 2, but the original Expos were held in Flushing Meadows, New York, so that's where I think they're still happening. It gives Tony two reasons to be in New York, the Expo and starting the process to build Stark Tower.

Building a high-rise in New York was about 700% more difficult than it needed to be. You’d think it would be as simple as buying the land and starting construction, but noooo. No, there were committees to be talked to, zoning and city ordnance issues to deal with, permission to be given before anyone so much as sneezed on the site in question. And the amount of signatures needed and red tape to be waded through was, frankly, almost enough for Tony to simply walk away entirely, except Pepper was pretty keen on the idea. And he was in New York anyway gearing up for the Expo later in the year. Pepper was definitely NOT keen on that idea, which meant he’d struck a nice balance.

And so, he was awake and leaving his rented luxury apartment north of the city at 7:30 on a godforsaken Monday morning in January. It was so cold he was pretty sure his nose hairs were curling up further into his nostrils for warmth. It was a damp cold that cut straight through his perfectly tailored wool coat and made him shiver. He hadn’t realized it would be this bad, he’d come straight from the airport in the suit last night, not bothering to drive (it had made Pepper’s eyebrows of disapproval come out, which was always thrilling and terrifying). 

He’d have to have Happy stop somewhere today and get him a windbreaker, because _damn it_. Gloves too. Maybe a scarf if he was feeling a touch of whimsy.

Looking up from his tablet, Tony stopped short in the partially snow-encrusted driveway, looking at his car with something akin to shock. 

“Jarvis,” He said into his Bluetooth, “What is on my car?” The answer was obvious, but still. 

“It appears to be ice, sir.”

“Ice.”

“Yes, sir. The humidity and cold temperatures often react as such when the cars are unprotected.” There was a vein of sarcasm in the AI’s voice now.

Tony still hadn’t moved, and was still staring at his car. “So…”

Jarvis, as per usual, seemed to know what he was thinking. “There is a scraper in the emergency kit in the trunk, sir.”

“A scraper. I can’t just turn on the heat?”

“That would take approximately ten minutes, sir.”

“Yeah, and I could dominate the world in ten minutes, I’m not waiting that long.” Pulling himself together, Tony popped the trunk on the car and rummaged through the metal briefcase in the back until he found a plastic piece with a handle, a flat end, and a brush.

It took about four scrapes of the thing before Tony, completely annoyed now, tossed the scraper to the ground and pulled out his phone. “This is ridiculous.” With a few taps and murmured comments that Jarvis logged, he scanned the size and shape of the car windows and was halfway through designing a heating system specifically for the windows by the time the car heater had defrosted them enough for him to drive.

\--------------------------

“By the way, we need garages.”

Pepper looked over at her boss, who had just walked fashionably late into the conference room, with raised eyebrows. “I— what— Why?”

“I had ice all over my car this morning, it took like three hours for it to melt.”

“Didn’t you just scrape it off?” She asked, not looking concerned or sympathetic in the slightest that he had been inconvenienced. Which he thought was quite rude.

“Please, that stupid thing had the efficiency of decaf coffee.”

“You’ve never had decaf coffee in your life.”

“Not the point.”

“So that’s why you got that glass delivery today,” Pepper had gotten the alert for the rush delivery on her phone, and was now putting the puzzle pieces together. “What are you doing to your car windows?”

“A self-heating system, it’s not important, are you seriously scraping ice off your car every day before you come in?”

“Yes, Tony, like every other normal person living with wintry weather, I scrape the ice off my windows in the morning in cold weather. And you are not building garages at our temporary apartments for our cars because you found it inconvenient to be a normal person this morning.”

Tony was already seven conversations beyond this one, so her comment didn’t make much sense, not that he was paying that much attention anyway. “Jarvis, pull the last modification for the repulsors, I didn’t like the lag, and switch back to the old red for the paint job. I am not going out in glitter unless a stripper puts it there.”

Pepper, who was way too used to this to be comfortable with, rolled her eyes and little and sat down at the conference table, signaling the receptionist’s assistant to show everyone in for the meeting. “If building crews show up at my apartment, I am going to be having words with you, Tony. Now put away your phone, or I’ll take it away. The grownups are coming.”

\---------------------------

She should have known, later that day, she hadn’t seen the last of that conversation (was it technically a conversation?).

Tony’s voice was brisk and slightly evasive when she answered his call a few hours after their zoning meeting ended. “Hey, I need to borrow your car.”

Pepper muted the TV (crappy daytime shows while she had a short lunch) and focused on her boss’ face on the tablet’s screen. “What?”

“I’m borrowing your car, I’ll have it back in like an hour.”

“No, Tony, that is not a rental with insurance, that is _my_ car, what are you using my—”

He had already hung up. Pepper sighed. She supposed she should be grateful he’d given her notice. She was going to call him back as soon as she was done with lunch (she guarded her precious half hour of personal time in the middle of her days with her life), but was inundated with business calls, and then back to back meetings that went much longer than planned. It was after nine at night before she even had time to breathe, and she’d completely forgotten about Tony borrowing her car. 

She was more than okay with taking Happy up on his offer to drive her back to her apartment (he’d clearly been waiting around for her until she finished with work), and had fallen straight into bed as soon as she got home.

It wasn’t until then next morning that Pepper gave the issue another thought.

She was sighing as she buttoned up her coat the next morning, anticipating the cold air outside that wouldn’t quite subside enough for several minutes as her car warmed up. She had her keys in her hand when she suddenly remembered in a flash that Tony had borrowed it. And last time he’d borrowed something of hers, it had not ended well for either of them.

Pepper stopped and glanced out the window, realizing that it hadn’t been there last night when Happy had dropped her off, so it must have been brought by sometime after that. Go figure, Tony taking her car “for like an hour” and then bringing it back a full twelve or more hours later. She studied her car through the window apprehensively, looking closely for any sign of, well, anything, since Tony had had something to do with it. She didn’t know whether to feel comforted or wary that nothing looked different.

She pressed the unlock button carefully, noticing nothing different about the sound or the way the light flashed briefly. Then she locked it, just to be sure, waiting for a machine gun or something to raise out of a compartment in the hood. Jets to suddenly appear near the back tires. An electrical field to sizzle into activity.

She left the apartment and approached the car with great caution, and it took fifteen minutes to check the thing over until she was finally satisfied that it wasn’t going to transform into a giant robot or something. And even then, she still hesitated about actually getting in the vehicle because Lord knew what Tony had been doing. 

He had four new cars at his disposal, since he had insisted he couldn’t just been seen in one car while they were in New York, because that was what normal rich people did and he wasn’t like that, he was a very special snowflake (Pepper had strongly considered smashing her tablet over his head at that point). So there was really no explanation whatsoever for Tony Stark needing to borrow her car (a really nice one, a Benz he’d gotten for her for her birthday last year when he realized that her birthday had passed two weeks previously).

He’d done something. She just didn’t know _what_.

After a few more minutes of looking the car over, Pepper finally gritted her teeth and got in, settling into her seat gingerly. Nothing felt different. She started the car, and the gentle purr of the engine didn’t sound odd.

Turning up the heat, Pepper glanced at the windows out of habit to judge how much longer it would take for the windshield to defrost or if she should scrape them off, then did a double take.

There wasn’t any ice on the windows. In her concern about finding out what Tony did to her car, she hadn’t even noticed that she’d been able to look through them and into the interior without a thick frosting of ice obscuring it.

It _might_ not have been cold enough last night for it to frost over the glass, but Pepper suspected that wasn’t the case. She got out of the car and looked around at the other cars on the street.

Iced over. Every single one of them.

With a deep sigh that swung between exasperation and fondness, Pepper got back in the car and pulled out of her short driveway, headed for Tony’s apartment. He didn’t have to be at any meetings today, so she knew exactly where he’d be. And she had a pile of stuff for him to sign and initial anyway.

\-----------------------------

“Tony!”

He was deep into the technical specs of something, moving his fingers around and adjusting a formula in midair when Pepper stalked into the basement of his apartment that had been turned into a makeshift lab/workshop. She was determined not to let his well-meaning interfering pass without comment. 

“Okay, raise that by .5 and see if it steadies the output.” Tony did some quick and probably obscenely impressive mental math, then altered a few digits in the calculations and clapped his hands. “Alright, I think we’re ready!”

“Shall I input everything into the machines at home, then?” Jarvis inquired, always on top of things.

“Make it so, chief.”

“Tony,” Pepper tried again.

He turned around quickly, nearly startled. “Oh, hi. What day is it?”

“Tuesday."

"Still?"

"Yes. Did you do something to my car?”

For a brief second, she could see the uneasiness behind his eyes that meant he was thinking about lying about it, but then he just shrugged. “Yeah. Fixed your windows. You said no garage.”

She was torn between scolding him and smiling, because he was looking at her in that way he had, like he was daring her to disapprove, that little taunting tip to the corner of his mouth.

“You shouldn’t have. Or you should have at least asked first.”

“You would have said no, so I skipped that part. And seriously, I just saved you a ton of time in the morning, now you can sleep in and you won’t be so grumpy.”

Okay, that one she wasn’t going to let him get away with, and Pepper had her mouth open to let him have it when she noticed the twinkle in his eye as he grinned. She could not make the reluctant smile stay off her face.

“You, Mr. Stark, are incorrigible.”

If she hadn’t wanted to smack him a little, his grin would have been adorable. “Thank you, Ms. Potts.” He nodded at the thick manila folder in her hands. “More crap to sign?”

“Yes. You want to get out of meetings, you have to sign more things.”

“It’s a cross I must bear.”


End file.
